// BBC UK NEWS — CRONACA
How rapist priest exploited charisma to abuse his 'cult-like' congregation
Chris Brain led the Nine O'Clock Service from 1984 to 1995
In the detailed written instructions given to the young women who worked without pay in the then-Reverend Chris Brain's house, there was a revealing demand.
The homebase team, as they were known, were to "do anything" the Church of England priest asked of them.
Routine tasks - assigned on a rota 24 hours a day, seven days a week - included cooking, cleaning, ironing, shopping, looking after Brain's young daughter, and walking his dog.
This housework was intended to free Brain for his mission of leading the Nine O'Clock Service (NOS), a radical congregation of hundreds of young people drawn weekly to a Sheffield church in the 1980s and 1990s by a fusion of rave culture, live music, environmental activism and liturgy.
But the lengthy list of homebase team duties did not spell out other demands Brain made in the attic bedroom of his family's end-terrace house in the suburb of Crookes, heard jurors at his retrial on charges of rape and indecent assault.
On Friday at Inner London Crown Court, the 69-year-old was found guilty of raping one woman in his congregation and four indecent assaults against three others.
He had already been convicted of 17 indecent assaults in August 2025 but faced a retrial as jurors could not reach verdicts on five further counts.
Brain will be sentenced later this year and has been told he is facing a custodial term.
His sentencing will conclude a dramatic and protracted downfall for a preacher who at one point been preparing to take NOS global with expansion to the US.